We stayed at Bald Head Island marina 3 nights before leaving the Carolinas for Florida around noon on March 22. We had another fairly slim weather window for this trip that we wanted to take advantage of. However, once we were clear of Southport it was immediately apparent that the sea state wasn’t going to be cooperative. Spending most of the afternoon bashing southward we opted to make way closer to shore hoping for a reprieve. We wanted to get out of the waves and slop.
Knowing that our weather window was already pretty tight this crossing. We were worried that getting us closer to shore meant we wouldn’t be able to make enough southward movement. This wouldn’t let us avoid the more uncomfortable weather that was coming in. We made a quick decision to find a spot in Myrtle Beach and aimed for the Little River Inlet. Michelle talked to a great guy at Coquina Harbor who was willing to squeeze us in. We now had our Plan-B in action and it kept us in the Carolinas.
When we made it to the Little River Inlet the weather calmed and the seas went flat. We made a last minute decision to use Plan-C. This plan was to try and make it farther south along the coast. Just before sunset, between the jetties at the Little River Inlet, we did a 180 and went back out to sea. This time hugging the coast a few miles offshore to make use of the westerly winds without the confused seas. For the first part of the night, it was great.
I had the sunset watch and was able to sail down the Myrtle Beach coastline. Taking in all of the lights and action on the beach from our viewpoint just offshore. When we changed our watch and I went down below, all was still good to get out of the Carolinas. It wouldn’t stay that way.
Just before 3 am on March 23 while Michelle was on watch, the wind abruptly shifted from westerly to easterly and began to quickly build to 30+ knots. It wasn’t a gust and there wasn’t a squall in sight. Just a quick shift. The seas built just as quick and it got nasty in a hurry. Michelle woke me up and we proceeded to drop the main so we could motor onward.
Our main halyard is 1mm too large for our Spinlock clutches so our mainsail doesn’t just “drop” like it should. It meanders down the mast until it’s about where a third reef would be and then it just sits there. Flogging. This requires me to go out on deck, climb up on the coach roof, and coax the main down into its stack. But doing this in rough seas with Giro bucking like a prize Texas bull makes this a sport in itself. It was while I was trying to do this that our starboard lazy jack line decided it had enough. It just gave up and the line parted. This meant that the entire starboard side of the stack pack had no support and so the mostly flaked mainsail just poured out onto the Bimini top and coach roof.
Sounds fun right?
While attempting to wrangle the main back into some idea of order by wrapping an extra line around it and the boom, old school style, is when I discovered a rather large tear in the leech of our mainsail.
Not cool.
Once we had everything tied down and secure, we continued on our path south. It was a continuous bash. It seemed that no matter what direction we angled the boat the seas just kept at us. Just as bad the winds were not consistent. Even if they were we were not going to raise sails until we had a chance to evaluate the damage to the main.
By the time we had made it to just east of Savannah and south of Beaufort, we had enough. We were tired, cranky, and well, just done with motoring in the crap. The Carolinas just weren’t letting us go. We tried the moving closer into shore, shallow water trick again but that didn’t help much given the direction the waves were coming from. At this point, we had enough. We saw the Southeast Channel on the charts and saw Beaufort, Parris Island, and Hilton Head so we started heading for shelter, again.
This time we saw that our best option given our mast height was going to be the back side of Hilton Head Island. What we didn’t notice was that the marina, Skull Creek Marina, was about 17 miles from the mouth of the inlet. What this meant is that by the time we bashed ourselves into the channel and inlet, through Port Royal Sound, into Skull Creek, then tied up to the fuel dock at Skull Creek Marina, all in the dark, it was 3 am.
Despite being completely exhausted and feeling like we could sleep for 3 days straight, we still had adrenaline from the evening morning pumping through our veins. One last check of dock lines, shutting down of electronics, and we sat in the cockpit and had a beer. In silence.